THEORY AND PRACTICE OF TANGIBLE USER INTERFACES

Daniel

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Our instrument is a group of five robots that each have their own percussive abilities. They are 1.) a four armed tap-bot that has four servos that tap tap tap on things, 2.) a two-armed spinning bot that hits things with it’s metal hands to make noise, 3.) a rolling pinecone that makes a rumbling noise on it’s surface, 4.) a shepard with a tap-tapping staff, and 5.) a scraper-bot that uses a bristly brush to scrape things and make noise.

We mounted 4/5 of them on a turning lazy susan, with the intention of making customization possible by changing the things on which the robots are tapping. (We could rotate the lazy susan to change what object each robot was tapping on.)

Our robots are controlled by a control board with 5 pots. They control: 1.) the tempo of the music that our bots make, 2.) the pattern with which the pine cone rolls, 3.) the pattern with which the scraper scrapes, 4.) the pattern with which the shepard taps, and 5.) the speed with which the spinny bot spins.

Challenges included: 1.) Getting the robots to tap with similar patterns // with some semblance of coherent synchrony, 2.) getting the different settings of the pots to have noticeably different sounds.

I made a bouncy balls animation where the FSR can control the gravity of the bouncy balls. I’ve attached a youtube video. Music is accompanied with the bouncy ball experienced. Also I added features that will let users control the color of the balls through mouse and control the color of backgrounds through keyboards. The user can also control the spring of the balls through up and down keys.

I didn’t focus as much on the mechanical part of the lab because I spent too much time playing with the animation and digging into the tutorial. Right now, I’m just controlling the force through my hands. But I definitely had a lot of fun playing with this lab and am looking forward to apply some mechanical concepts in the future.

/* Photocell simple testing sketch.
Connect one end of the photocell to 5V, the other end to Analog 0.
Then connect one end of a 10K resistor from Analog 0 to ground
Connect LED from pin 11 through a resistor to ground
For more information see http://learn.adafruit.com/photocells */
int photocellPin = 0; // the cell and 10K pulldown are connected to a0
int photocellReading; // the analog reading from the sensor divider
int LEDpin = 11; // connect Red LED to pin 11 (PWM pin)
int LEDbrightness; //
void setup(void) {
// We'll send debugging information via the Serial monitor
Serial.begin(9600);
}
void loop(void) {
photocellReading = analogRead(photocellPin);
// LED gets brighter the darker it is at the sensor
// that means we have to -invert- the reading from 0-1023 back to 1023-0
photocellReading = 1023 - photocellReading;
//now we have to map 0-1023 to 0-255 since thats the range analogWrite uses
LEDbrightness = map(photocellReading, 0, 1023, 255, 0);
analogWrite(LEDpin, LEDbrightness);
Serial.println(photocellReading);
delay(100);
}

For this assignment, I used a miniature tree as the diffuser. I place all three LEDs onto the miniature tree while using leaves as background. I’ve taken the cross-fading code and added some personal flavor to it. By allowing the user to control the blue color while alternating the speed of fading through out the loops. There are a total of three different fading stages with varying speed. The outcome is not as ideal as some other types of diffuser that will actually allow you to see the fading and the mixing of colors. But I wanted to see how the LED lights would look on a miniature tree and see if it can resemble a christmas tree.

McCullough’s argument that computers are made for the mind and not for the hands is accurate enough to apply to most of computing devices today. However, increasing awareness and improvement have also happened in the past 10 years to make computers more adaptable and friendly to different parts of human organs. Let’s take iPhone as an example, Steve Jobs’s insistence that iPhone should be used easily with our fingers is a huge step forward to force software designers to develop their applications according to how users physically interact with them. Old palmtop computers are considered as failures because human are not used to holding a pen when they interact with computers. So the claim that computers are made just for the mind should be considered as rather outdated since physical interaction with computer is quite different now thanks to touchscreen technology.

On the other hand, there has also been movement of shifting the focus of making computers just for the mind in the past decade as well. Take google glass, virtual reality, and self-driving cars as example. These technologies are created so our hands can do less labor. The interaction is shifted away from the hands to the voice or to other bodily movement. Even though these movements have yet to be widely adopted, the focus of computers right now is leaning towards being a tool for human’s most natural movement. For example, if a task can be completed the most easily with our mouth, then the designer should strive forward to design the interaction with the mouth. Hands are definitely very subtle and sensitive, but the affordance of hands should also be considered because not all tasks should rely on hands. It’s interesting to note the creation of iPad pro has actually bring back the pen just because our hands aren’t precise enough for certain art creation process. So McCullough’s point of view on the relationship of hands are art is also being constantly challenged as technology develops.

I used Arduino with three LED lights. I have used the red, the blue and the green LED lights. I have placed the blue and red on the left side of the breadboard and placed the green on the right side of the breadboard. To achieve this, I have used two grounds and two different pins (pin 13 and pin 0). The blue and red lights will turn on for one second and turn off for .5 second, then the green LED will turn on for 2 seconds and turn off for .5 seconds. The loop will restart after green LED turns off. I have uploaded the code to ensure the timing is right. Use the black wires for grounds and the orange wires for the rest of the pins. I have also used three resistors, each LED light uses one.